Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed back Thursday on claims that race relations have gotten worse under President Donald Trump.
Rice fired back when NBC’s Sheinelle Jones argued that things “feel worse” under the Trump administration than they had in the past.
Rice did not appear to be convinced, responding, “It sure doesn’t feel worse than when I grew up in Jim Crow Alabama. So let’s drop this notion that we’re worse on race relations today than we were in the past. Really? That means we’ve made no progress.”
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Rice, who served under former President George W. Bush as the nation’s first black female Secretary of State, conceded that America has certainly had issues with race — but argued that those problems wouldn’t be solved by fixating on what hadn’t been done yet. (RELATED: Condoleezza Rice’s Forceful Defense Of Brett Kavanaugh)
“I think the hyperbole about how much worse it is isn’t doing us any good. This country’s never going to be colorblind. We had the initial original sin of slavery. It’s still with us,” she added.
Jones jumped in then, attempting to tie the hyperbolic rhetoric specifically to the president, saying, “For people who say, it’s top-down, it starts with the president—”
“Oh, come on, alright,” Rice interrupted. “I would be the first to say we need to watch our language about race. We need to watch that we don’t use dog whistles to people. But when we start saying, ‘Oh, you know, it’s worse today,’ no, they’re not.”